This blog is all about my game development efforts. This will include posts about graphics (2D and 3D), animation, level design and various types of coding on a variety of platforms (Windows, Android, iOS and hopefully Ouya and Raspberry Pi (don't look at me like that)). I hope people find my posts educational, informative and entertaining 8)

- I'm also willing to let readers submit their own posts if they're good enough.

You can see game programming projects I've undertaken in the very recent past here (unity.kewlmcserver.net). Sadly I've managed to lose my ancient stuff. But in all honesty I didn't get very far anyway.

I might also transfer this to Wordpress. Or is there a better blogging site I should use?

If you want to speak to me about any of this feel free to click here :)

Feel free to chat about dev/programming-related issues on the forums :)

Been messing about with AutoTileGen by Pixelatto. Looks like a decent way of putting together levels for 2D games. Not seen anything I dislike about it so far and comments generally seem positive about it.

Bear in mind I am NOT a graphics guy lol, nor do I pretend to be one, however, as an aspiring indie-developer working in a gigantic team of 1 I have to produce pretty much everything myself, including graphics, levels, animations, [occasional] 3D models, audio, code (of which is my main area of expertise), EVERYTHING.

I bought the wireless accessory kit for it too as it wasn't comfortable working with the cable sticking out the back.

Here's some quick experiments I've done with it so far. Both took a few minutes each.

Boobarella

HarryNJewman; RogueIndie2020

Both were done with GraphicsGale. I wholeheartedly recommend this for anyone wanting to do spriting work in Windows.

Now to add more detail to sprite, and maybe animate it, and put it in Unity3D prototype (get it responding to user input (walking, running, jumping, shooting etc)), or maybe just start a brand new one (I get bored way too easily!).

Someone was complaining about the lack of weapon for Boobarella. So here you go.

Also, behold...... Boobarella3000!!!

Boobarella3000 Vs Boobarella Original

In any game I doubt I'd have it much bigger than this. I've also decided to do all my character sprites at 64x64 resolution with 8 bit colour (256 colours). Was previously using 32x32x4 (16 colours) but that doesn't allow for anywhere near enough detail for me.

Have cleared space on left of desk for my 2nd monitor and gonna try plugging PC into TV on the right so I could work simultaneously on the 3 screens. I had this setup before I moved here, but one of the screens was permanently off *facepalm*

This is the kinda configuration I'm going for (but with the 2 side screens being slightly smaller than the main one directly infront of me):

Note: no this isn't my desk (I wish it was that clutter-free - Ha, no, I'm not a forex trader lol)

Working on a bunch of new animations for use in some games. Here's the first:

My graphics at this stage doesn't need to be perfect, just adequate. They're just placeholders.

The goal is that they convey the correct message in any game I put them in, that they look somewhat like what they're supposed to portray. Once I hit upon a prototype that starts becoming popular hopefully someone, with real graphics expertise, will offer to replace them for me with higher-quality work. Kinda like the approach taken with Gunpoint game. Like I said, I'm a coder not an artist and there's aren't enough hours in the day to master both

Here's an example of how basic a level you can get away with, even in wildly successful games. It's all about the gameplay - as Minecraft very ably demonstrated. But if your soldier looks like a car, and your car looks like a horse, you might have fucked up somewhere...

PS dev soundstracks of awesomeness continue apace...

Here's a couple more animations in the same vein as previous one - basically a top-down view of some guy doing various things. If it looks more like a TD view of a horse autoerotically asphixiating itself, please do say so I can improve them. No room for shit work here.

These should all be animated, but for some reason they're not playing in my browser (any ideas why?) so will make vid later showing them all individually.

I suspect that's probably adequate for now. With the Boobarella3000 stuff I worked at 64x64 but that currently seems like overkill for TD stuff. Gonna stick with that resolution for the sidescrolling / platform stuff however.

Animation Lesson: Always leave enough space for your sprite to do everything you fucking well need it to do *facepalm*

I left precious little space to work with on either side of the guy (16 pixels wide) so doing fancier anims like grenade-throwing, rolling, diving, jumping etc are probably outta the question for now. Also soooooo damn tempting to try 32x32.

Yano, this probably answers my question of whether or not something like a flamethrower should use a particle system or somekind of precanned animation like the following-

Problem with above approach I took is it looks the same everytime, whereas if code was used to generate the actual flame i.e. via a "particle system" the dispersal of the fire could look genuinely random each time it's fired.

If you're wondering where all the coding is at, you're gonna have to wait a bit longer (not much though). The plan is to create as many 2D assets as possible, so when I'm ready to go back into Unity3D all my graphics are ready and waiting for me. In the meantime you can checkout coding I did mainly in January and February by clicking here

I've actually identified 13 different projects (mainly rebooting old retro games from the '80s and '90s) that I want to work on, pretty much simultaneously (I get bored easily), over the next few months, while I brainstorm for new indie projects that could actually make serious money.

The idea is that those 13 carefully-chosen projects will teach me pretty much everything I need to know about 2D games-dev (and enhance my knowledge of 3D stuff), so that at the right time I feel confident to undertake ANY indie project that can be realistically undertaken by a lone developer. Right now I'm not confident that I could realize a winning, commercially-lucrative idea. Hopefully these projects will change that.

While I've done a fair bit of coding before (C/C++/C#, PHP, Visual Basic, Javascript, Perl - in roughly that order) most of it was in domains other than gaming.

This technology employs, "Brainwave Entrainment" - the flashing lights and pulsating sounds coming from the headphones dominate a large portion of your sensory input and thus guide your brain to specific levels of activity. It's not instant, it takes upto a few minutes and you need to relax and let go. You can use this for relaxing/meditating, waking up/becoming more alert, getting into a state conducive for creativity or learning. It's pretty kewl.

I don't find myself taking them every day though. The verdict's still out on these, although like with previous ones I find myself feeling a bit more alert (maybe it's just a placebo effect?) and sometimes it feels like there's a lot more blood sloshing about in the ol' server room.

All the ingredients for the 2 I've tried so far are things that are conducive to optimal neural functioning.

They're pretty expensive; my current ones are £45 for a month's supply although some people have spoken of good results when halving the dose (to spread supply over 2 months). Are they dangerous? No, I don't think so. Would Amazon sell anything they knew or thought would be problematic? I think generally the supplements can be trusted but there's some stuff that is probably dubious - be very wary of buying this kinda thing from unknown vendors online - they could sell you literally anything.

Yes, it has room for improvement. A LOT, but I'm not a graphic artist or animator, so sue me bitches!

The idea is to create "passable" placeholder visuals and put them in my games, then when my games start getting noticed I'll enlist expert help with the graphics, audio etc while I focus on the coding, gameplay/design and business issues.